By Raphael Bibas

According to the CDC (1):

• Heart disease remains the leading cause of death for most groups of people (men, women, and people of most racial groups).
• One person dies every 33 seconds from cardiovascular disease.

Despite the rapid development of medical technology and the unbelievable improvement of health outcomes between the 20th and 21st century, we continue to face the number one killer in the world, cardiovascular disease. It not only has the most detrimental impact on our global population, but also lacks discrimination in its effect. It is important to remember the tools we must have to tackle this issue and make heart disease a problem of the past as we celebrate World Heart Day.

We now have ways to prevent and treat even the most difficult cardiovascular complications. As many know, we even have the capability to entirely replace someone’s diseased heart with a healthy heart from a donor. Even before that, the discovery of anesthesia changed the medical field forever in surgically treating heart issues, but now many of our problems extend outside the hospital. As a result, disease prevention is still the number one way to put a halt to these disease numbers, and one of the most effective preventative methods that can be utilized is health education and the global adoption and use of Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) in the cardiac care even at the primary care level.

A study from the known Journal of Community Hospital Internal Medicine Perspectives (3) in 2023 shows POCUS is largely underutilized in analyzing the cardiac complaints of patients, meaning that we don’t use point of care ultrasound nearly enough to meet the need of many patients. Furthermore, many studies in the past have highlighted the high efficacy of POCUS even with physicians of first-time exposure (3). However, medical programs and hospitals still don’t utilize POCUS to its full extent due to needing good training courses. With the right resources, Cardiac POCUS education can be taught with lower-than-expected time investment, especially in fields such as emergency medicine and anesthesia.

This is even more evident when realizing that POCUS in general has never been more accessible with the portability of new handheld ultrasound devices. Furthermore, cardiology is a specialty form of POCUS that can also overlap with other specialties (2), and it is vital for a medical professional to receive proper training to have the confidence to execute these advanced examinations. That’s where Inteleos’ academies become invaluable for medical professionals around the world. The POCUS Academy provides many clinical certifications including POCUS Cardiac Certification, and for cardiac sonographers around the world the American Registry for Diagnostic Medical Sonography offers credentials of Registered Diagnostic Cardiac Sonographer (RDCS).

Future advancements highlight the potential for artificial intelligence (AI). We need to train and certify medical professionals to guarantee the safe use of the technology by healthcare professionals to ensure patient safety.

References

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart Disease Facts. CDC. Accessed August 10, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/heart-disease/data-research/facts-stats/index.html
2. John, A.M., et al. 2023. The evolution of cardiovascular ultrasound: A review of cardiac point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) across specialties. The American Journal of Medicine, 136(7), 621-628. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2023.02.020
3. Money, D.B., et al. 2023. Cardiac point-of-care ultrasound (P.O.C.U.S.) utilization for hospitalists in the assessment of patients with cardiac complaints: An educational overview. Journal of Community Hospital Internal Medicine Perspectives, 13(4), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.55729/2000-9666.1217